BTW, for some of you gringos not "in the know" on this, spelling in Spanish is a LOT different than it is in English. In English pronunciation it is almost cliche to say how the sound of letters varies wildly between words.

Spanish is completely different, in that, with very few exceptions, every word is spelled exactly how it sounds. The spelling of a word in Spanish provides an extremely unambiguous guide to the pronunciation of the word. There is no such thing as a homograph in Spanish, the same combination of letters will always be pronounced the same.

Now, certain individual letters will be pronounced differently according to their position in the word, but again, there are a very few very specific rules that govern these changes, and exceptions are practically nil. In English, the exceptions practically outnumber the rules themselves.

I only bring this up because some speakers of English may not see what the big deal is in discussing how one particular letter is pronounced, because in English, one letter has 20 different pronunciations, with no rule to tell you which is used when. Not so in Spanish, the rules are precise, and rigid.

BTW, for some of you gringos not "in the know" on this, spelling in Spanish is a LOT different than it is in English. In English pronunciation it is almost cliche to say how the sound of letters varies wildly between words.

Spanish is completely different, in that, with very few exceptions, every word is spelled exactly how it sounds. The spelling of a word in Spanish provides an extremely unambiguous guide to the pronunciation of the word. There is no such thing as a homograph in Spanish, the same combination of letters will always be pronounced the same.

Now, certain individual letters will be pronounced differently according to their position in the word, but again, there are a very few very specific rules that govern these changes, and exceptions are practically nil. In English, the exceptions practically outnumber the rules themselves.

I only bring this up because some speakers of English may not see what the big deal is in discussing how one particular letter is pronounced, because in English, one letter has 20 different pronunciations, with no rule to tell you which is used when. Not so in Spanish, the rules are precise, and rigid.

I think that this is beside the point, as most if not all who posted here realize that Spanish is phonetic. More relevant is the fact that, as with any other widely-spoken language, there are dialectical differences between groups of Spanish-speakers.